No Turning Back
by Allisha Shelly
Summary: Clary is an introverted high-school student who experiences a bumpy ride through adolescence with Simon and Isabelle, her crooked but vibrant friends. Her already rough life is then further complicated because of a cocky boy named Jace Wayland. Together, the four teenagers learn that in order to overcome adversities, often there is no way of turning back. Favorite, Read, Review!
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One  
Fall of Sophomore Year

I hate movie trailers—especially ones for those obtuse rated-R comedies—because they always reveal the funniest jokes, the most intense cuts of action scenes, or the most anticipated on-screen kiss. The funniest joke part bothers me the most, because while actions scenes and kisses can be re-watched and enjoyed more than once, a clever punchline wrings out a chuckle on its first try, but becomes stale and annoying the next go around.

"Well, I disagree," says Simon. He's sprawled across my baby blue bed, his calculus homework a wrinkled mess beside him. He thoughtfully nibbles on the eraser of his mechanical pencil. "Some jokes never get old."

With my arms crossed and eyebrows raised, I lean back against the glossy Fitz and The Tantrums poster on my bedroom door. "Oh, really? Name one."

"Remember when you got mad that Maureen didn't hire you to mow her lawn for twenty bucks per mow? And she hired scrawny little Raphael instead?"

"Oh, jeez." I bite back a smile. "And he said that it was because he was Maureen's 'manly macho friend' and he flexed his non-existent muscles and-"

"-He got a charley horse in his arm." Simon interrupts. I can't suppress the smile that breaks across my face. "See? It's funny."

"Fine. That one doesn't get old. But, you must admit, movie trailers still spoil all of the best parts of a movie. Like-"

I'm abruptly cut off by ominous owl hoots. Simon commences an unhurried search through the pockets of his purple skinny jeans for his cell phone. He rolls over, plowing across several sheets of calculus homework, crinkling the notebook paper even further.

"Si, you are in dire need of a new ringtone," I say. "That owl thing is so creepy."

Simon rolls his eyes. He's now fumbling across my bed, throwing aside papers and pencils and pillows. "If my ringtone were catchy, I'd be so absorbed in listening to it that I'd forget to even pick up the call." He discovers the source of the owl hoots under one of his miscellaneous homework folders, and he doesn't even glance at the caller ID before bringing his phone up to his ear and saying, almost indignantly, "what's up, Maia?"

After a long pause, Simon's eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. He rakes his free hand through his mountain of coffee brown curls. "I'm so sorry, babe." But his apology doesn't sound sincere; it sounds agitated. His eyes stare down the vintage forty-watt Coca-Cola lamp that sits on my bedside table as Maia babbles on the other end of the line. Maia and Simon have dated for about a year now, but now that Maia is a senior, she's under so much stress applying for colleges and maintaining her three part-time jobs that she's created a chasm in their relationship. My brows knit together in concern as I watch Simon carry a tension-strung conversation with Maia. He refuses to meet my gaze, which is burning holes into the side of his head.

Simon's nose suddenly crinkles in frustration. "Look, I'm sorry that happened. Parents suck. But I'm studying with Clary right now, and we have a big calc test tomorrow, and I really don't have time to crash with you tonight. I'm sorry."

I hear Maia's voice rise on the other end of the line. Simon clutches his cell phone so tightly that his fingertips are fluorescent white, and his lower lip trembles as though he's about to cry. But he does the complete opposite of cry when he opens his mouth.

He explodes.

"I never have time for you anymore? _I_ never have time for _you_ anymore? As if you ever have any time for me these days! Maia, I'm your boyfriend-not your pet or your slave or whatever. You can't just ignore me when you don't need me and then demand me to do this and that when you do. All you do now is complain about how much your life sucks, and I try to be there for you, but you won't let me! And, excuse me, Miss Hypocritical, but you're never there for me anymore, either.

"Oh, and for the last fucking time, I'm not cheating on you with Clary, because I'm trying to be a good boyfriend. But, clearly, you're not good enough of a girlfriend to trust anything that I say to you anymore, because you think that everyone in your life right now is just trying to make it worse. Am I right? Do you have any more complaints that you're just dying to tell me? Well, guess what? I don't want to hear any of them!"

Panting, flushed, and shaking with rage, Simon hangs up and throws his phone onto my bed.

_What a harshly sassy monologue, _I think. I've never, in the two years that we've been friends, seen Simon so rampantly furious. His face is as red as hot lava, and his breathing is ragged.

I suddenly feel guilty about not realizing how much Simon and Maia's relationship had crumbled. For all of this time, Simon had kept secret that Maia thought he's cheating on her with me. I taste bile in the back of my throat at the absurd thought.

"What happened?"

Simon drops his head into his hands and sinks down to his knees. "She's pissed because her parents got into a fight again. And she's 'scared' that this fight will be 'the one' and now she wants me to haul my ass over to her house to have sex with her and make her feel better and what not." He shakes his head. "I mean, my parents got divorced and I'll admit that it sucked, but I hate how everything nowadays is all about _her _problems. I hate how she's moody all of the time, and how she won't tell me anything because she loves pitying herself, and I hate how she only ever talks to me anymore because she needs some cheer-up sex."

My eyes widen in horror.

"Then she blames me for not being there for her, which is so unfair, since she doesn't let me be there for her because she never talks to me anymore! Well, except asking me to have sex with her. Like just now."

It takes a minute for me to absorb his words, which tumble out of his mouth more quickly than my brain can string them into coherent sentences. I'm utterly incredulous when I finally realize what Simon is telling me. "Maia is using you?"

"I feel like she is."

"Oh, Si, that's just awful."

Simon takes a deep breath. Then he collapses face-first onto my bed. "And to make things worse," he says into my pillow, "she thinks I'm cheating on her with you, because once again she wants to blame me for never being there for her, so she's just making up excuses to make it seem like it's _my_ fault that our relationship is falling apart."

"Oh, Si, I'm so sor-"

"God, I hate her so much."

"I know, and-"

"God, I can't believe her. What a bitch."

"Si-"

"FUCK MAIA! FUCK HER TO THE MOON!"

His words slice the air, so fiercely that the silence that follows feels scorching. I'm shocked. I'm so shocked, in fact, that I'm paralyzed, incapable of peeling myself away from my Fitz and The Tantrums poster. I frantically scramble through my mind to conjure up something—anything—to say to my tormented friend.

"Si?" My voice is barely audible. I clear my throat. "I'm so sorry."

He groans into my pillow. "Fucking Maia," he mumbles.

I tentatively crawl over to my bed and haul myself up onto the memory foam mattress. Simon's face is buried in a pillow, and his entire frame is trembling.

"Are you crying?"

Simon wails, "Well, of course I'm crying. I basically just broke up with my girlfriend. How could I not be crying?" He clutches the pillow more tightly and releases a horrendously heartbreaking sob. Once again, I'm paralyzed, terrified that I'll say or do something that will only make Simon more upset. He looks so vulnerable, curled in a fetal position and crying a river. I feel bizarrely intrusive, like I shouldn't be seeing what I'm seeing, like this is a viewer-discretion-is-advised scene and I belong in the inappropriate audience.

But I'm his friend, and good friends comfort friends who feel as though their lives have become so askew that their world is about to crash down.

"Si," I whisper, hesitantly reaching out to give him a pat on the shoulder. He flinches away from my touch, and my heart sinks. "Um, I'm so sorry that this is going on right now. You don't deserve this, and Maia is a bitch and you're so much better than her, and...I seriously think you need some ice cream."

_Ice cream? _I internally chastise myself. _How much more cliché can I get?_

But, to my relief, Simon unravels himself and gently lifts his head up from my pillow. His face is pink and splotchy and he looks awful, but his puffy eyes suddenly light up. "You're damn right, Clary," Simon declares, his voice raw. "Maia is a bitch. I am so much better than her." He tosses my now tear-stained pillow aside and leaps off of the bed. "I am so." He ceremoniously wipes his nose. "Much." He straightens his black-blue plaid shirt. "Better." He drives his fingers through his disheveled hair. "Than that bitch." He grabs me by my forearms and yanks me up from my bed. I'm taken aback when Simon grins. His smile contradicts this tear-streaked face.

"Ice cream?" I ask.

"Hell yes."

* * *

A perk that comes with being friends with Simon, who's a junior, is that he can drive.

We pile ourselves into his cluttered chartreuse Chevy Sonic, throwing crushed water bottles, crinkled sheets of pizza coupons, and empty Kroger plastic bags into the back seat. Simon drives as aggressively as boils the rage bottled up inside his chest. We shamelessly tear through my suburban white-picket-fence neighborhood, nearly running over a couple of daring squirrels as they cross the road.

Simon drives through the typical cloudy Michigan evening in silence. Halfway down the main road, I turn on the stereo and blast his favorite song by Lorde.

"I'm kinda over getting told to throw my hands up in the air," Simon sings along, an octave lower than Lorde and slightly off-tune. I see a small grin break across his face, and my heart instantly warms.

We pull into the Tasty Twist parking lot blaring Lorde through our open windows. A couple sitting on the bench along the side of the ice cream shop turns to give us annoyed glances. Simon abruptly returns to looking tormented when he yanks the keys out of the ignition, brusquely silencing the stereo. He collapses onto the steering wheel and burrows his face into the crook of his elbow.

"I'm so sorry." I reach over and rub his shoulder.

"I miss the old Maia," whines Simon.

I swallow. Seeing Simon like this breaks my heart. Every last drop of his usual exuberance has been extinguished and replaced with pure, cold anguish. "Come on, Si." I gently coax him up into a sitting position. "I think you need a turtle sundae."

As we walk up to the fluorescent-lit blue and white ice cream shop, Simon drags his orange converse across the asphalt as though there are weights bound to his ankles. His head hangs, his shoulders sag, and his hands are clenched into fists in his jean pockets. It's weird seeing flamboyant Simon so _deflated_. To my disappointment, he doesn't brighten even the slightest when we settle down in red plastic chairs to eat his favorite ice cream sundae.

We hear the clink of a bell as the door opens and another customer steps in. I would have disregarded it if Simon's head hadn't suddenly snapped up and his eyes hadn't widened to the size of saucers. His plastic spoon slips from his fingers and clatters onto the table.

"What?"

"Don't turn around," Simon hisses.

Too late.

I twist around in my chair and my eyes land on Maia.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two  
Fall of Sophomore Year

Maia is a short girl. Simon towers over, but she holds her head high. Her fingers are nervously entwined in her dark brown curls as she valiantly meets Simon's gaze.

I watch them argue beside Maia's rusting blue-gray Oldsmobile in the Tasty Twist parking lot. I'm sitting quite a distance away, on the bench that formerly hosted the couple that had given Simon and me evil looks for our loud music, yet I can still hear them over the evening wind flurries.

"You followed me here?" Simon roars.

"Well, your lime-green car with a license plate that says 'Simon' sure stands out."

"So, you saw my car on the road and you thought that it would be a good idea to just chase me down?"

"Well, I figured that we'd have to talk sooner or later."

"Talk?"

"Yes, Simon. Talk. Please, just give me a chance."

"A chance? You mean, _another_ chance?"

"Simon-"

"I've given you enough chances."

Maia finally allows her gaze to dip down to her feet. She drops her hands from her hair so that they hang limply at her sides. She sighs-I don't hear it, but I see her shoulders rise and fall. It's a surrender.

"I owe you an apology." Her voice cracks.

Simon guffaws, and throws his hands up into the air in exasperation. "Actually, you owe me a million apologies."

"Yes, I do, and you will get to hear my million apologies if you come to my house. Now. Please. We need to talk."

And just like that, Simon whisks me into his car and drives me back home, with Maia following close behind. I glance uneasily at the rearview mirror to see that her stare is shooting daggers at the back of my headrest.

"Simon?"

"Yes?"

"Do you still love Maia?"

Simon stares straight ahead, his brown eyes glassy. He looks exhausted. "I don't know," he whispers.

"Do you think Maia still loves you?" I blurt.

Simon scrunches his face, and he suddenly looks even more distressed than before.

"I don't know." He sounds utterly broken, and my heart shatters.

The rest of the car ride is wrapped in stifling silence. I desperately want to help Simon, but all I can do is sit helplessly in his passenger seat and toggle with the stereo for a good radio station—all to no avail. When he drops me off in my driveway, he briefly thanks me for "the ice cream and, well, everything" and promises to text me later.

"What about all of your calc stuff?" I ask, suddenly remembering his massive pile of homework and study guides, which is currently littering my bedroom floor. He'd need them to study for the test tomorrow. That is, if he even gets the chance to study at all tonight. I cast him a wary look.

Simon sighs. "I'll just have to pick it up tomorrow. Sorry for making your room a total mess."

"It's okay, it was messy to begin with, but what about the test tomorrow?"

Simon shrugs. "I can get a C on this test on still have an A in the class."

We both jump out of our skins when Maia impatiently honks her horn. Even though I can't see her clearly through her tinted windshield, I glare at her.

"I guess that's my cue to leave. Good luck with Maia tonight."

"Thanks." I'm taken aback when a corner of his mouth quirks up into a small but sincere smile. Relief washes over me to finally get a glimpse of normal Simon again. I can't help but smile too.

"My pleasure. Text me if you need anything."

"Okay. 'Night, Clary."

"Goodnight." I shut the passenger door just as Maia honks once more. I walk up my driveway without looking back, and I hear tires viciously grate over asphalt as Simon and Maia speed away.

* * *

As soon as I shut the front door, Mom hollers, "WHERE WERE YOU?"

"With Simon," I shout. I swiftly slip out of my Converse and follow the scent of spices and olive oil into our stainless steel kitchen. Mom is poised over the stove, her red hair pulled back in a long ponytail and her eyes fixated on a pan of sizzling vegetables.

"Don't you have a calculus test tomorrow? You should study! Not go out with Simon."

"We did study. We studied a lot, actually. Then we got ice cream because we wanted a break." This was only partially a lie. We did study a lot, albeit what Mom thinks constitutes "a lot" does not completely agree with my definition. I also doubt that she would agree that "grieving over a shattering relationship" is the same thing as "wanting a break.

She makes a disapproving clucking noise with her tongue as she rolls up the sleeves of her royal purple cardigan. "Are you still going to get an A tomorrow on your test?"

"Of course. I rock at calc."

Mom fastidiously adds salt to her vegetable stir-fry while a pot of water boils on the adjacent stove. She has always been the cook of the family. As a university art professor, her work hours are very flexible, so she can get off work early enough to whip up twenty restaurant-quality dishes every night. Even though she always bombards me with questions and incessantly nags about studying as she stirs and fries, I still love to stand beside her and watch her work her magic.

"I don't like Simon," Mom suddenly says.

I'm taken aback. "What?"

"He's not a good influence."

I hate it when she unjustly accuses my friends of being 'bad' people without enough contexts. She firmly believes that anybody who is either not on the Quiz Bowl team or without a four-point GPA should automatically be classified as a "bad influence." Annoyance seeps into my voice as I fiercely defend Simon. "How is he not a good influence? He's smart, he's nice, he's funny, and he's responsible."

Mom scoffs. "You say that boy is smart, but I can tell he doesn't know how to make good decisions."

This time, I don't restrain my eye roll. "Mom, you're being ridiculous."

"I'm not." She picks up the pan of vegetables and sets it on a coaster next to our microwave. "That boy looks like someone who has sex and smokes and does illegal drugs. He doesn't look responsible."

My jaw drops open and my eyes bulge out incredulously. I'm a little insulted that she would think that I would be friends with those kinds of people. "Mom, Simon is not that kind of person!"

"Look at how he dresses," she says, as though Simon's fashion sense alone suffices to prove his inability to "make good decisions." I think about his plaid shirts, his colored skinny jeans, his pastel button-ups, his corduroy jackets, and his converse in all sorts of bright colors. His selection of clothing isn't like the typical tasteless assortment of sweatshirts and old jeans that most boys sport at school, but I think his clothes are intriguing and bordering on sophisticated. They help him radiate confidence, not an aura of bad-boy.

"What's wrong with how he dresses? He doesn't wear leather jackets or metal bracelets like the people at school who _actually_ do drugs."

Mom shakes her head and says dismissively, "I can't explain it to you."

"You don't need to. Simon is not a bad person. He's a good friend."

Mom vigorously shakes a box of spaghetti into the pot of boiling water. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear and sighs. "Just don't do stupid things with that boy.

I'm about to retaliate that Simon doesn't do "stupid things" when my phone vibrates in the pocket of my sweatshirt. My heart leaps.

Shit. Simon.

But, when my iPhone screen lights up, Simon's name doesn't appear under the date and time. Instead, I see a name that makes my heart stop.

Isabelle Lightwood.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three  
Summer before Freshman Year

My first long-distance friendship began the summer between middle and high school.

I went to a summer art camp—because I proudly represent the underground cult of the Almighty-High-School-Art-Geek—during the most beautiful week of July in a secluded forest, a mile off of the shore of Lake Michigan. During my short seven private lessons from a state-renown art professor from the University of Michigan, I received some of the most constructive feedback on everything, from my technique to my creative ability. I learned how to master new brush strokes, to capture a landscape more realistically, and to portray human body proportions more accurately.

But most importantly, I learned what it felt like to have a best friend.

For my whole life, up until that camp, even though I've always fallen on the more introverted side, I had a scattering of friends, with whom I felt comfortable but not deeply tight-knit. I never had a person to whom I could reveal all of my inner thoughts, questions, worries, memories, and fears. From childhood through middle school, I couldn't find somebody who could trust me to keep their secrets, as well as assure that they would do the same for me. Thus, the notion of having a "best friend" was foreign, if not unattainable, to my insecure rising-freshman self.

Then I became abruptly but happily acquainted with the notion during this art camp.

One week was all that it took. Seven days flew by and poof! I had a best friend. Her name was Isabelle. Isabelle Lightwood. She was so pretty: long black hair that shined, glittery sapphire eyes, and unblemished skin. The first real conversation that we had with each other began with her asking me: "why are you named Clary?"

We had this conversation while eating lunch in the fish-scented, greasy, windowless mess hall, our trays overflowing with bland potato salad and dry sandwiches. We had gone to lunch early due to early dismissal from our group art lesson, so most of the tables were unoccupied, and the mess hall was relatively quiet compared to its typical cacophony of chatter. I found it nice to be able to eat and converse without the white noise of a thousand other yapping students.

As I took a long sip of apple juice, I shuffled through my brain to remember why my parents named me Clarissa.

"Well, Clary's actually short for Clarissa. But I'm pretty sure that my parents wrote in my baby book that I'm named after an angel from this 80's TV show," I finally said.

"An angel?" She leaned a little closer so that our forearms nearly touched. "That's so cool. What TV show was it?"

I bit my lip. "I can't remember."

"Well, that's a bummer." She abruptly shifted her attention from my face to the white, clumpy mess on her lunch tray. Twirling a lock of hair around her fork, she grumbled, "You want my potato shit?"

I laughed and vigorously shook my head. The potato salad was, undeniably, shitty. Then again, anything mass-produced and churned out in a mess hall could hardly be considered gourmet cuisine. I pushed around the thick chunks of potato with my fork.

Isabelle suddenly nudged my arm with her elbow. "Do you want to get some ice cream with me at the snack bar before we go to painting class? The only good food at this camp is their chocolate soft-serve."

I sighed, remembering that I left my wallet in my luggage, which sat under my bed on the opposite side of campus. "I wish I could, but I left my money in my cabin."

"Oh, please, that's no excuse. I got you covered. I've saved up a good four-hundred dollars from babysitting my little brother this year. And I put away one-hundred of that just for ice cream." She smiled so brightly that it was infectious. I instinctively smiled back.

And just like that, we wound up sitting in the shade of the tallest tree on campus Main Square, devouring ice cream while having the most enjoyable and comfortable small talk of my life. I learned an abundance about Isabelle: she was the oldest of the family, with younger brothers named Alec and Max; her house was designed oddly like church; she was the same age as me, though slightly older by two months and 17 days; she was trained in martial arts along with her brothers; she had her first kiss in seventh grade with a boy whom she'd thought was gay; she didn't know how to cook; and she desperately wanted tattoos all over her arms.

She told me all of this so easily. Eloquent conversations in general flowed so naturally out of her. Even though I responded much more laconically than she did, Isabelle impressively managed to coax words out of me that I'd never uttered to my friends back home. I had only known Isabelle for two and a half days. Despite this, I told her everything from little quirks, such as hating cats, to deeper personal matters, such as how I'd never had my first kiss or a boyfriend. I told her that I was friends with a boy named Simon, and she asked me if I was interested in him, but I admitted that I thought he was gay.

During our thirty minutes under the tree, Isabelle learned that I never had an expansive smattering of friends like she did. I had a small circle that I sat with during lunch in school, and occasionally I got together with one of them to ride bikes or window-shop at the mall. Most of my time, however, was spent reading YA fantasy or drawing fanart—alone. I told her that I considered myself a nerd and an introvert. Perhaps not an introvert to the greatest degree of social ineptitude, but I didn't have hour-long text conversations with friends about frivolous, trivial "girl stuff" like typical teenage girls.

Yet, I felt like a typical teenage girl around Isabelle. I couldn't understand why I felt so comfortable around her. My comfort level reached the point that I revealed my bizarre, embarrassing secret that I was afraid to use tampons, and had thus never used one. However, upon hearing this absurdity, Isabelle didn't make me feel embarrassed or awkward. She didn't laugh. She didn't cringe. She simply shrugged and said light-heartedly, "well, everyone's afraid of something or another. I'm scared of seals."

"Seals?"

"Yup. Everyone thinks they're cute, but I think that they're_ too_ cute. You know what I mean?"

I shook my head.

"Like, I bet their overwhelming amount of cuteness is just a mask for something super dangerous on the inside."

"And what's this super dangerous thing on the inside?"

"I don't know. Maybe they're trying to take over the world."

"Like, build a seal empire?"

Isabelle's face broke into a wide smile, revealing her upper-cheek dimple. "Yeah!" She chuckled. "A seal empire. I can see it already."

I couldn't help but laugh with her.

When we saw students begin to pour out of the mess hall, it was time for our next class. Isabelle and I swiftly gathered our belongings and began our trek through the forest. It was a beautiful afternoon—crisp air, blue sky, and only a smattering of fluffy clouds. When we were just about to walk into the small wooden gazebo in which our painting class would be conducted, I felt a light tap on my shoulder. A masculine voice bellowed, "you dropped your pencil bag."

Isabelle and I whirled around, and our eyes landed on the most beautiful boy who has ever walked the planet.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four  
Summer Before Freshman Year

He was inconceivably, almost inhumanly gorgeous: curly blonde hair, bronze skin, defined biceps, and pale gold eyes. I'd never seen anybody with gold eyes before, but the unique color made his pleasantly captivating.

The boy handed me my tattered baby blue pencil bag. I grabbed it, unable to tear my gaze away from his luminous eyes. Our fingers brushed for a split second, and I immediately felt a betraying blush crawl up my neck and pool in my cheeks. He must've noticed, because a corner of his peach-red lips tugged his mouth up into a sly, crooked smirk. This made me blush even harder.

When I spoke, my voice was humiliatingly thin and shaky. "Um, thank you—"

"Jace," he interjected.

"Clary," I replied, my voice still uneven. He immediately thrusted out his right hand, and I hesitantly shook it. Once my hand was in complete contact with his, I became a prime example of spontaneous human combustion.

"And you?" Jace turned his attention to Isabelle.

"I'm Isabelle," she said as she tucked a strand of silky hair behind her ear, revealing three ear piercings: two ruby studs on her earlobe, and one silver ring on her cartilage. I stared at her piercings as she and Jace shook hands.

"It's a pleasure to meet you two," Jace said. Then he turned towards the doorway to the gazebo and gestured towards it with a grand flourish of his arm. "Ladies first."

Isabelle giggled and I couldn't help but grin. I liked how Jace radiated confidence, a trait that I clearly lacked. I followed Isabelle into the gazebo. In the middle of the wooden floor stood a circle of rusty metal chairs. I was surprised to see that there were no easels and canvases today. Several students sat in a sporadic pattern around the circle, none of them talking to each other. They either stared intently at the sketchpad on their lap, or let their gaze mindlessly wander around the gazebo. I recognized most of the faces in the room, but I still struggled to match their appearances with their names. The small space was utterly, stiflingly silent. When Jace marched in behind Isabelle and me, he immediately broke the quiet.

"So, who's excited to learn how to paint?" Jace's voice echoed through the gazebo, rich and resonant. Everybody's head instantly snapped up to meet Jace's gaze, but nobody smiled or grumbled or showed any sort of reaction to his comment. Finally, a girl with sholder-length, chestnut, blonde-streaked hair and piercing blue eyes—I think her name was Kaelie—spoke up.

"Since when were you in this class?" She asked. Her voice was laced with something edgy and mischievous.

Kaelie was right. I had never seen Jace in painting class before. Surely I would've noticed somebody so stunningly attractive if he had actually been a part of the class since the beginning of camp.

Jace shrugged his broad shoulders. "I was in pottery, but I learned that making pots just isn't my thing, so I got transferred to this class."

"They let you switch classes?" A boy whom I couldn't remember the name of exclaimed incredulously.

"Yup," Jace said. He began to pursue the chairs toward the left end of the gazebo, and Isabelle and I swiftly followed him. We sat down, and to my relief and uncontainable excitement, I beat Isabelle to the seat next to Jace.

"Well, I hate painting. How did you switch out?" The boy eagerly asked Jace.

"Just go to the head's office and ask. He's really chill."

"Sweet. Thanks, man."

Jace nodded. The room returned to silence as the rest of the class filtered into the gazebo. Mr. Hodge, our teacher, walked in behind the throng of students, wearing his signature paint-splattered overalls. I expected him to be pulling a cart full of easels, but he was empty-handed.

This befuddled me. "How are we going to paint without an easel and a canvas?" I whispered to Isabelle. She shrugged and crossed her arms.

"I bet he has something up his sleeves," she mumbled.

Beside me, Jace was playing with the bulky digital watch on his wrist. His ash blonde curls hid his face from my view. My eyes drifted down the short sleeve of his blue camp uniform to his exposed bicep. Fine blonde hairs dusted the surface of his muscular arms and his large, strong hands. He was so attractive. I wouldn't have been surprised if it were a sin to look as good as Jace did.

I didn't stop openly gawking at Jace until Mr. Hodge cleared his throat and settled down in a rickety wooden stool in the middle of the circle. His hands rested on his lap and he sat facing towards the section of students to the left of me.

"Well, how was lunch for you guys?" He asked.

"Good," everybody answered in unison.

"Absolutely disgusting, actually," Jace said after everybody had gone silent. "The food here is quite disappointing."

Mr. Hodge's eyebrows shot up to his thinning hairline. "Well, I don't recognize you, young man."

"I'm Jace Wayland. I'm a new student of yours, actually. I got transferred here from pottery because I learned that I absolutely hate clay."

Mr. Hodge chuckled. "Well, it's nice to meet you, Mr. Wayland. I suppose that if pottery isn't right for you, then painting may as well be!"

"I sure hope so," Jace said, grinning. His entire face brightened, and his gold eyes glittered.

I nearly disintegrated in infatuation.

"Well, class, today I have only one deceivingly simple task for you all to complete," Mr. Hodge announced. "As you may have noticed, there are no easels today."

The class nodded in unison. Except for Jace—he simply shrugged.

"This is because I've discovered that students often jump to their brushes and begin painting on their canvases long before they've thoroughly planned what they'd like to pain in their heads. You see, you can't paint your best if you are too hasty to just jump to your canvas. You must take your time, really think about how you are going to execute your painting, and once you've formulated a really clear image, that's when you pick up your brush."

Mr. Hodge stepped off of his stool and began to walk towards the exit. Everybody's eyes trailed after his movements. He stepped outside of the gazebo, leaving everybody befuddled, and then immediately returned with a bowl of fruit in his hands.

"This is the fruit bowl you will be painting tomorrow," Mr. Hodge explained. "Today, I want you all to carefully plan out your piece. Think about every last detail. Are you going to paint it like a impressionist? Or are you going to take a realistic approach? Will your background be light or dark? What kind of mood do you want your piece to have? What story is it going to tell? Are you going to put more emphasis on highlights, or shadows? Are you going to use bright colors, like pop art, or are you going to use more muted tones? These are only some of the things that you need to think about prior to actually painting. So, I'm going to put this bowl into the middle of the circle, and I want you guys to start planning. I'll be in the back corner grading your watercolor works from yesterday. Any questions?"

The class was once again silent. I snuck a quick glance to my left at Jace, but, to my surprise, he didn't have anything to say either. Mr. Hodge shrugged, and walked through the circle to ceremoniously place the fruit bowl on the stool. Then he planted his hands onto his hips and announced, "Feel free to talk to each other about your thoughts, by the way. I don't expect a silent room." Without turning back, he lumbered across the gazebo to a corner where, indeed, sat a pile of our watercolor landscapes.

I averted my gaze to the fruit bowl. It was a red ceramic bowl, and it held a shiny red apple, a green-brown pear, three semi-ripe bananas with green streaks across their yellow skins, a large plump orange, and a scattering of strawberries.

A couple of students began talking somewhere to my right, but I muffled their conversation as I immersed myself in my planning. Painting this fruit bowl more realistically would've been the most traditional way to approach this. But I wanted to be creative. Mr. Hodge was giving us an opportunity to surge with innovation, not to clutch onto our comfort zones. Though I wasn't fraught with creative ideas, surely I could pull together something that could impress him.

I spun the color wheel through my head, examining each individual highlight and shadow of the fruits and attempting to match them to their respective color. I imagined a canvas full of intense, vibrant, pop-art-like tones. Then I envisioned a paintbrush in my hand, the brush guiding my movements from exquisite to broad strokes across my blank canvas. The world around me fell away, leaving only the fruit bowl in front of me and myself. My mind reeled, shifting through possibilities ad infinitum. Endless ideas stormed through my head, entangling me, until I finally found a slit of light through the darkness towards which I didn't hesitate to sprint headlong. I embraced the idea, caressed like it was precious.

I was going to paint this fruit bowl with inverted colors.

It would be so cool, albeit tedious to invert each individual color of the fruit bowl. Still, it would be completely worth it. A black backdrop, a vivid blue bowl, a bright purple pear, a—

"Wow, you really get into this."

My reverie abruptly shattered and I was violently thrown back into reality. Utterly disoriented, I blinked until the world finally came back into focus. I turned to my left to see Jace sitting hunched over with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands supporting his head. He stared directly at me without smirking or smiling; he simply looked thoughtful, almost a little curious.

I blushed as his gold eyes continued to stay fixated on exclusively me, and I dropped my head so that I stared at my hands, which were entwined with each other on my lap.

"I see you take painting really seriously?" Jace asked.

Without looking back up at him, I nodded, almost a little sheepishly. Jace couldn't understand how much of my life revolved around art. Frankly, my life would be nothing without painting and drawing. "Yeah," I breathed. "I like to draw too, but painting is just a lot more fun, you know?"

"Well, confession, but I actually suck at art."

This made my head snap up. My eyes widened and I stared at Jace, expecting to find sarcasm in his expression. To my surprise, he looked completely earnest, almost a little embarrassed.

"Then why are you at an art camp?" I asked, bewildered.

"Because I just wanted to get out of the house."

My eyebrows drew together in confusion. For someone who wasn't even good at art, why would he pay two thousand dollars to attend an advanced art camp solely to "get out of the house?" His parents must have been overwhelmingly rich.

Jace cleared his throat and returned his gaze to the fruit bowl. "Well, it's not that I don't like art. I love looking at it, but I could never execute it myself. Honestly, I can hardly draw a straight line—let alone a fruit bowl."

Jace's honesty amazed me. "Is that why you switched out of pottery?"

"Because I'm a hopeless sculptor as well as a painter? I suppose. I took the class at first because I thought that building stuff with Play-Doh-like stuff would be easier than wielding a paintbrush, but—"

"Miss Fray!" Mr. Hodge's suddenly voice boomed. I nearly jumped out of my seat.

"Your watercolor landscape is just beautiful!" He hollered even more loudly. Slowly, I turned in my seat until I could see him waving my art in the air maniacally. I wanted to burrow myself into a hole before I died of humiliation overdose.

"Look at those exquisite colors! Look at that sunset! Look at those beautiful waves in the water! Miss Fray, you are a revelation!"

Revelation. Mr. Hodge had called me a revelation.

I'd never seen him so thrilled before. He'd usually don a calm demeanor, but right then he look as energized as a little child who'd just gotten ice cream.

Everybody in the gazebo directed his or her attention to my watercolor sunset. I'd painted a contemporary realism piece inspired by a beautiful sunset that I'd witnessed at Lake Michigan a couple of years ago. It was well executed, but I couldn't consider the painting as anything _that_ extraordinary. It was certainly not something that would encourage Mr. Hodge to believe that I was a "revelation."

"That is incredible," Jace suddenly said under his breath.

"It is," someone else chimed.

"Damn, Clary," Isabelle whispered.

"That is remarkable."

"What a pretty sunset."

My gaze danced around the gazebo, and to my astonishment, everybody had looks of genuine amazement plastered onto their faces as they openly gawked at my landscape. Mr. Hodge, still holding my painting high up in the air for the entire world to see, beamed so vibrantly that I couldn't help but smile.

His gaze momentarily dipped down to his wrist, and then his eyes widened. "Oh, it looks like we only have five more minutes of class left." He let out an aggravated sigh, finally dropping his arm so that my sunset faced the floor. "This class really deserves longer than thirty minutes. Anyways, we'll be painting the fruit bowl tomorrow. I'll set up your canvases and easels and everything for tomorrow as usual. Keep in mind what you planned out today. I expect creativity!"

With a flick of his arm, Mr. Hodge dismissed the class. Everybody shot up from their seats and pushed and shoved their way out of the gazebo. Isabelle, Jace, and I lingered behind the main throng of students.

"That painting was really good, Clary," Jace said.

I felt gratified by his genuine compliment. "Thank you."

"Have you been painting your whole life?"

"Pretty much," I admitted.

The three of us stepped outside into the forest. I hadn't realized how stifling the air was in the gazebo until I'd returned to the wide-open environment outside. Isabelle turned her body towards the dirt road that led to our drawing class. Jace approached the gravel path that spilled to whatever his next class was. With a glowing smile that was as bright as his eyes, he said, "it was a pleasure to meet you two lovely ladies. See you tomorrow?"

"See you," I said at the same moment as Isabelle's terse "yup."

And then Isabelle and I finally turned away from Jace. When we were clearly out of earshot of him, I declared, "Jace is so hot."

Isabelle rolled her eyes and let out an irritated sigh. "He is. I mean, I'm not really into blonde guys, but I must admit, he's pretty damn hot. However—" she shook her head, "—he is _so_ cocky. I can't stand it."

I pursed my lips, considering the truth in Isabelle's words. Yes, Jace was very cocky, but I interpreted his outwardness as confidence rather than arrogance. Quite frankly, being outgoing gave him a sense of humor and a bizarrely, almost dangerously magnetic charm. I shrugged. "I guess he's not too bad."

"We'll see how not-bad he is after four more days of him," Isabelle grumbled.

"He's still hot."

Isabelle laughed. "Very true."


End file.
